Morphosyntactic alignment

Inlinguistics,morphosyntactic alignmentis the grammatical relationship betweenarguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) oftransitive verbslikethe dog chased the cat,and the single argument ofintransitive verbslikethe cat ran away.English has asubject,which merges the more active argument of transitive verbs with the argument of intransitive verbs, leaving theobjectdistinct; other languages may have different strategies, or, rarely, make no distinction at all. Distinctions may be mademorphologically(throughcaseandagreement),syntactically(throughword order), or both.

Terminology

Arguments

Dixon (1994)

The following notations will be used to discuss the various types of alignment:

• S(fromsole), thesubjectof anintransitive verb;
• A(fromagent), the subject of atransitive verb;
• O(fromobject), theobjectof a transitive verb. Some authors use the labelP(frompatient) for O.

Note that while the labels S, A, O, and P originally stood for subject,agent,object, andpatient,respectively, the concepts of S, A, and O/P are distinct both from thegrammatical relationsandthematic relations.In other words, an A or S need not be an agent or subject, and an O need not be a patient.

In a nominative–accusative system, S and A are grouped together, contrasting O. In an ergative–absolutive system, S and O are one group and contrast with A. TheEnglish languagerepresents a typical nominative–accusative system (accusativefor short). The name derived from thenominativeandaccusativecases.Basqueis an ergative–absolutive system (or simplyergative). The name stemmed from theergativeandabsolutivecases. S is said toalign witheither A (as in English) or O (as in Basque) when they take the same form.

Bickel & Nichols (2009)

Listed below are argument roles used by Bickel and Nichols for the description of alignment types.Their taxonomy is based onsemantic rolesandvalency(the number of arguments controlled by apredicate).

• S,the sole argument of a one-place predicate
• A,the more agent-like arguments of a two-place (A1) or three-place (A2) predicate
• O,the less agent-like argument of a two-place predicate
• G,the more goal-like argument of a three-place predicate
• T,the non-goal-like and non-agent-like argument of a three-place predicate

Locus of marking

The termlocusrefers to a location where the morphosyntacticmarkerreflecting the syntactic relations is situated. The markers may be located on theheadof a phrase, adependent,andbothornoneof them.

Types of alignment

1. Nominative–accusative(oraccusative) alignment treats the S argument of an intransitive verb like the A argument of transitive verbs, with the O argument distinct (S=A;Oseparate) (seenominative–accusative language).In a language with morphological case marking, an S and an A may both be unmarked or marked with thenominative casewhile the O is marked with anaccusative case(or sometimes anoblique caseused fordativeorinstrumentalcase roles also), as occurs with nominative-usand accusative-umin Latin:Juliusvenit"Julius came";JuliusBrutumvidit"Julius saw Brutus". Languages with nominative–accusative alignment can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the A argument and promoting the O to be an S (thus taking nominative case marking); it is called thepassive voice.Most of the world's languages have accusative alignment.
   An uncommon subtype is calledmarked nominative.In such languages, the subject of a verb is marked for nominative case, but the object is unmarked, as are citation forms and objects of prepositions. Such alignments are clearly documented only innortheastern Africa,particularly in theCushitic languages,and the southwestern United States and adjacent parts of Mexico, in theYuman languages.
2. Ergative–absolutive(orergative) alignment treats an intransitive argument like a transitive O argument (S=O;Aseparate) (seeergative–absolutive language).An A may be marked with anergative case(or sometimes anoblique caseused also for thegenitiveorinstrumentalcase roles) while the S argument of an intransitive verb and the O argument of a transitive verb are left unmarked or sometimes marked with anabsolutive case.Ergative–absolutive languages can detransitivize transitive verbs by demoting the O and promoting the A to an S, thus taking the absolutive case, called theantipassive voice.About a sixth of the world's languages have ergative alignment. The best known are probablythe Inuit languagesandBasque.
3. Active–stativealignmenttreats the arguments of intransitive verbs like the A argument of transitives (like English) in some cases and like transitive O arguments (like Inuit) in other cases (S_a=A; S_o=O). For example, in Georgian,Mariammaimğera"Mary (-ma) sang",Mariamshares the same narrative case ending as in the transitive clauseMariammac'erilidac'era"Mary (-ma) wrote the letter (-i)", while inMariamiiq'o Tbilisši revolutsiamde"Mary (-i) was in Tbilisi up to the revolution",Mariamshares the same case ending (-i) as the object of the transitive clause. Thus, the arguments of intransitive verbs are not uniform in its behaviour.
   The reasons for treating intransitive arguments like A or like O usually have a semantic basis. The particular criteria vary from language to language and may be either fixed for each verb or chosen by the speaker according to the degree of volition, control, or suffering of the participant or to the degree of sympathy that the speaker has for the participant.
4. Symmetrical voice,also calledAustronesian alignmentandPhilippine-type alignment,is found in theAustronesian languagesof the Philippines, parts of Borneo and Sulawesi, Taiwan, and Madagascar. These languages have both accusative-type and ergative-type alignments in transitive verbs. They are traditionally (and misleadingly) called "active" and "passive" voice because the speaker can choose to use either one rather like active and passive voice in English. However, because they are not truevoice,terms such as "agent trigger" or "actor focus" are increasingly used for the accusative type (S=A) and "patient trigger" or "undergoer focus" for the ergative type (S=O). (The terms with "trigger" may be preferred over those with "focus" because these are notfocussystems either; morphological alignment has a long history of confused terminology). Patient-trigger alignment is the default in most of these languages. For either alignment, two core cases are used (unlike passive and antipassive voice, which have only one), but the same morphology is used for the "nominative" of the agent-trigger alignment and the "absolutive" of the patient-trigger alignment so there is a total of just three core cases: common S/A/O (usually callednominative,or less ambiguouslydirect),ergativeA, andaccusativeO. Many of these languages havefouralignments, with additional "voices" that mark alocativeorbenefactivewith the direct case.
5. Direct alignment:very few languages make no distinction among agent, patient, and intransitive arguments, leaving the hearer to rely entirely on context and common sense to figure them out. This S/A/O case is calleddirect,as it sometimes is inAustronesianalignment.
6. Tripartitealignmentuses a separate case or syntax for each argument,which are conventionally called theaccusative case,theintransitive case,and theergative case.TheNez Perce languageis a notable example.
7. Transitive alignment:certainIranian languages,such asRushani,distinguish only transitivity (in the past tense), using atransitive casefor both A and O, and anintransitive casefor S. That is sometimes called adouble-obliquesystem, as the transitive case is equivalent to the accusative in the non-past tense.

The direct, tripartite, and transitive alignment types are all quite rare. The alignment types other than Austronesian alignment can be shown graphically like this:

In addition, in some languages, bothnominative–accusativeand ergative–absolutive systems may be used, split between different grammatical contexts, calledsplit ergativity.The split may sometimes be linked toanimacy,as in manyAustralian Aboriginal languages,or toaspect,as inHindustaniandMayan languages.A few Australian languages, such asDiyari,are split among accusative, ergative, and tripartite alignment, depending on animacy.

A popular idea, introduced in Anderson (1976),is that some constructions universally favor accusative alignment while others are more flexible. In general, behavioral constructions (control,raising,relativization) are claimed to favor nominative–accusative alignment while coding constructions (especially case constructions) do not show any alignment preferences. This idea underlies early notions of ‘deep’ vs. ‘surface’ (or ‘syntactic’ vs. ‘morphological’) ergativity (e.g. Comrie 1978;Dixon 1994): many languages have surface ergativity only (ergative alignments only in their coding constructions, like case or agreement) but not in their behavioral constructions or at least not in all of them. Languages withdeep ergativity(with ergative alignment in behavioral constructions) appear to be less common.

Comparison between ergative-absolutive and nominative-accusative

The arguments can be symbolized as follows:

• O= most patient-like argument of a transitive clause (also symbolized asP)
• S= sole argument of an intransitive clause
• A= most agent-like argument of a transitive clause

The S/A/O terminology avoids the use of terms like "subject" and "object", which are not stable concepts from language to language. Moreover, it avoids the terms "agent" and "patient", which are semantic roles that do not correspond consistently to particular arguments. For instance, the A might be anexperienceror a source, semantically, not just anagent.

The relationship between ergative and accusative systems can be schematically represented as the following:

	Ergative–absolutive	Nominative–accusative
O	same	different
S	same	same
A	different	same

The followingBasqueexamples demonstrate ergative–absolutive case marking system:

Ergative Language

Gizona etorri da. gizona-∅ the.man-ABS S etorri da has arrived VERBintrans gizona-∅{etorri da} the.man-ABS{has arrived} SVERBintrans 'The man has arrived.'

Gizonak mutila ikusi du. gizona-k the.man-ERG A mutila-∅ boy-ABS O ikusi du saw VERBtrans gizona-kmutila-∅{ikusi du} the.man-ERGboy-ABSsaw AOVERBtrans 'The man saw the boy.'

In Basque,gizonais "the man" andmutilais "the boy". In a sentence likemutila gizonak ikusi du,you know who is seeing whom because-kis added to the one doing the seeing. So the sentence means "the man saw the boy". If you want to say "the boy saw the man", add the-kinstead to the word meaning "the boy":mutilak gizona ikusi du.

With a verb likeetorri,"come", there's no need to distinguish "who is doing the coming", so no-kis added. "The boy came" ismutila etorri da.

Japanese– by contrast – marks nouns by following them with different particles which indicate their function in the sentence:

Accusative Language

Kodomo ga tsuita. kodomoga childNOM S tsuita arrived VERBintrans {kodomoga} tsuita {childNOM} arrived SVERBintrans 'The child arrived.'

Otoko ga kodomo o mita. otokoga manNOM A kodomoo childACC O mita saw VERBtrans {otokoga} {kodomoo} mita {manNOM} {childACC} saw AOVERBtrans 'The man saw the child.'

In this language, in the sentence "the man saw the child", the one doing the seeing ( "man" ) may be marked withga,which works like Basque-k(and the one who is being seen may be marked witho). However, in sentences like "the child arrived"gacan still be used even though the situation involves only a "doer" and not a "done-to". This is unlike Basque, where-kis completely forbidden in such sentences.

See also

• Active–stative alignment
• Agreement (linguistics)
• Differential argument marking
• Differential object marking
• Milewski's typology

Further reading

• Aikhenvald, A. Y.,Dixon, R. M. W.,& Onishi, M. (Eds). (2001).Non-canonical Marking of Subjects and Objects.Netherlands: John Benjamins.
• Anderson, Stephen. (1976). On the notion of subject in ergative languages. In C. Li. (Ed.),Subject and topic(pp. 1–24). New York: Academic Press.
• Anderson, Stephen R. (1985). Inflectional morphology. In T. Shopen (Ed.),Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon(Vol. 3, pp. 150–201). Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
• Chen, V. (2017).A reexamination of the Philippine-type voice system and its implications for Austronesian primary-level subgrouping(Doctoral dissertation).University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
• Comrie, Bernard. (1978). Ergativity. In W. P. Lehmann (Ed.),Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language(pp. 329–394). Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Dixon, R. M. W. (1979). Ergativity.Language,55(1), 59–138. (Revised as Dixon 1994).
• Dixon, R. M. W. (Ed.) (1987).Studies in ergativity.Amsterdam: North-Holland.
• Dixon, R. M. W. (1994).Ergativity.Cambridge University Press.
• Foley, William; &Van Valin, Robert.(1984).Functional syntax and universal grammar.Cambridge University Press.
• Kroeger, Paul. (1993).Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog.Stanford: CSLI.
• Mallinson, Graham; & Blake, Barry J. (1981). Agent and patient marking.Language typology: Cross-linguistic studies in syntax(Chap. 2, pp. 39–120). North-Holland linguistic series. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
• Patri, Sylvain (2007),L'alignement syntaxique dans les langues indo-européennes d'Anatolie,(StBoT49),Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden,ISBN978-3-447-05612-0
• Plank, Frans. (Ed.). (1979).Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations.London: Academic Press.
• Schachter, Paul. (1976). The subject in Philippine languages: Actor, topic, actor–topic, or none of the above. In C. Li. (Ed.),Subject and topic(pp. 491–518). New York: Academic Press.
• Schachter, Paul. (1977). Reference-related and role-related properties of subjects. In P. Cole & J. Sadock (Eds.),Syntax and semantics: Grammatical relations(Vol. 8, pp. 279–306). New York: Academic Press.
• van de Visser, M. (2006).The marked status of ergativity.Netherlands: LOT Publications.
• Wouk, F. & Ross, M. (Eds.). (2002).The history and typology of western Austronesian voice systems.Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, ANU Press.